the Neptune Society of Salt Lake just tried to kill me

The grisly aftermath 

So I took the letter out of my mailbox this morning; junk mail from the Neptune Society of Salt Lake. I was on my way to the Provo Rec Center for a morning swim. Like a fool I inserted my left index finger into the fold to pull down and roughly open it.

And the overly stiff return envelope inside gave me a hellacious paper cut on the very tip of my finger:

I bled all over my freshly laundered shirt and pants as I dashed into the bathroom to initially wrap my bloody finger in winding sheets of tp until I got out the iodine and cotton gauze. I poured a pint of hydrogen peroxide over the still streaming wound, then bound it securely and taped it up with several band aids:

Now I can’t go swimming and I can barely type. My ceramic bathroom sink is stained a lurid pink. And all because those cursed poltroons, those ninnyhammers, at the Salt Lake Neptune Society HAD to send me idiotic literature about cremation:

I didn’t request the damn stuff, and I definitely DO NOT want to be reminded of my inevitable dissolution on a fine winter morning, when I was going to work out and then take the 850 bus on State Street to Rancheritos for a bacon & egg breakfast burrito (they’re huge; I only manage to eat half in one sitting, and save the other half for an early dinner -- just $5.95.)

Of course this is a small thing -- a mere blip and not even a ripple in the stream of passing life. But dammit, all I’ve got left are small things. The big things are all far behind me now. So is it so petty of me to wax wroth over this microscopic glitch in the cosmos?

You bet your sweet tuchas it’s not.

It’s time someone gave the bratty cosmos a swift kick in the pantaloons; and that someone is you and me.. Please, won’t you join me, the next time you blow out candles on your birthday cake or get the larger end of a chicken’s wishbone, in wishing the Neptune Society of Salt Lake and its entire mother loving staff be sent straight to perdition until Trump gets a crew cut?

Or just share this post until it goes viral . . .

(I've called their customer service line, which nobody answered, and left a blistering voicemail.)

******************************

I sent these appleknockers an email with this link, and here is their reply:

Hi Mr. Timothy,

My name is Oliver Fernandes and I’m the marketing analyst for the Neptune Society.

If you can provide me with your full mailing address, I will add your name to our Do Not Contact database.

I’m sorry for any inconvenience you might have received from our mailers.

We at the Neptune Society are passionate about helping each individual plan for their end-of-life arrangements at an affordable price.

But we also understand that not everyone is ready to make their pre-planning arrangements, so I’ll be more than happy to help you being removed from our mailing list.

Please reply to me at your earliest convenience.

Thank you,

Oliver Fernandes

Marketing Analyst

SCI Direct Inc.

1250 S. Pine Island Road, Suite 500 | Plantation FL 33324

E: Oliver.Fernandes@sci-us.com

P: 954.556.9469

C: 908.803.3835

Les résultats de mon test ADN d'Ancestry.com

Scandinavie 40%
 Norvège orientale
 Norvège centrale
 Europe de l'Ouest 26%
 Irlande / Ecosse / Pays de Galles 11%
 Péninsule Ibérique 10%
 Grande-Bretagne 8%

The Birth of my Daughter Madelaine

“You better cut it off” Larry Cardner warned me lugubriously, when I informed him that Amy and I were expecting our sixth child. Seeing as Larry was the owner and operator of the Cardner Shrine Circus, and I was employed by him as a clown, and we were in Polson, Montana, where the deer and the antelope might play but where there was no bus service, I refrained from telling him to go take a flying leap -- contenting myself instead with unplugging his electric cooler when he wasn’t looking so his daily Coors intake would be lukewarm.

I’m not exactly sure how this vignette ties in with the story I’m about to tell, except that I always liked making babies and enjoyed, for the most part, raising them. The birth of our first child, with its attendant hugger mugger, is an esteemed memory that I keep close to me -- like those rub on tattoos I found inside pieces of Bazooka bubblegum as a child.

In 1981 my former Mission President, Harvey Brown, missed our wedding reception in Salt Lake, so to make up for it he booked a hoity toity suite at the Hotel Utah for Amy and I at his own expense. And that is where, I firmly believe, our daughter Madelaine was conceived.

Approximately nine months later, towards the later part of May, we were living in Bottineau, North Dakota, where I was the news director at a brand new FM radio station -- KBTO. As a wedding present to Amy I had promised to give up my peregrinations with the circus for something stationary. Since the station’s broadcast area included the nearby Turtle Mountains, I began each newscast by saying “And now it’s the voice of the turtle from KBTO . . . “ I’m still cringing over that overripe piece of hokum today.

As the Memorial Day weekend approached Amy staggered through each muggy day with cheerful determination. The local pediatrician assured us the baby was in fine fettle, although we didn’t get an ultrasound, and so didn’t know the baby’s gender. The nearest ultrasound equipment was a hundred miles away, in Minot. As is the wont of pregnant women, Amy evinced some overpowering cravings, which I tried my best to assuage. She wanted red hot pickled sausages, so I stopped by one of the frowzy beer joints in Bottineau and paid an outlandish price for a half gallon bottle of Big Mama pickled sausage. She wept for a box of See’s Chocolates, made only in Salt Lake City -- so I called one of her sisters who lived in Utah to ship out a big box post haste.

And she sighed continually to go see her folks in Tioga, about 150 miles due west on Highway Two. I didn’t think it prudent to take her on such a long trip with the baby ready to bang out at any moment, but she was being such a good sport about the whole thing -- never a cross word or beetled brow -- that I told her we would leave Friday afternoon for Tioga and then come back late Sunday. The dj’s down at the station could just rip copy off the AP wire and read it for news while I was gone.

At this point I’d better make it clear that I didn’t drive. Didn’t know how. Didn’t care to learn. I walked or rode my bicycle. Or had Amy drive me. So she drove the whole way to her folk’s house in Tioga -- and then, not unnaturally, her water burst a few hours later.

Her mother and I rushed her up the street to the Tioga Hospital, where Dr. Patel was on call. It was a small rural hospital, and it had only 3 doctors. They were brothers, from India -- all named Patel. In the ensuing hubbub I could never remember which Dr. Patel had said what or done what. All I know is that Madelaine’s birth certificate shows the delivering physician to be Dr. Patel. If she wants to know which one she’ll have to hire Sherlock Holmes or Nero Wolfe to find out.

My conception of the birthing process, gleaned from old movies and trite television sitcoms, was that there would be about twenty minutes of discomfort, and then a baby would leap out, clean as a whistle, and with a lusty cry begin nursing and making adorable faces. Amy’s mother, who had had a dozen children herself, told me I’d better go get a magazine and settle in for a long, long night.

24 hours later I began to see what she meant. Amy was extremely slow to dilate. The nurses gave her castor oil to hurry things along, but that didn’t do anything except clean her out but good. I want to describe how dead on my feet I was at the time, but then I remember that it was Amy who was having all the hellish contraction pains for the past 24 brutal hours -- so I think I’ll just shut up about my own discomforts.

Finally, at around noon, with one last wavering scream of agony, Amy managed to push out our first child. A girl. Six pound, seven ounces. And completely covered with silky black hair.

“Gosh Almighty!” I yelled at Dr. Patel (don’t ask me which one.) “it’s an orangutan!”

“Not to worry” he soothed me. “Very common for first babies. It will all shed in a few hours.”

And, by golly, it did.

We brought Amy back to her parent’s house the next day, where it was determined she would stay and recuperate for a few days. Now the question became “How do we get that dumb husband of hers back to Bottineau to go to work?” I couldn’t drive myself, since I didn’t know how to drive. So it was decided that Amy’s younger brother Casey would be my chauffeur. He dutifully drove me back home in our blue Ford station wagon, and stayed for a few days cleaning out the refrigerator down to the grease spots on the enamel.

The next weekend Casey and I drove back to Tioga to pick up Amy and the baby. She drove the 150 miles back home while I held little Madel Paddle -- as we had started to call her. That night, as Amy and I gazed lovingly at her lying in her crib, Amy turned to me, squeezed my arm, and whispered:  “You are going to learn to drive or I am going to murder you.”  

And, by golly, I did.

De nouveaux parcs marins pour aider les Seychelles à rembourser leurs dettes internationales

Une nouvelle solution à la dette internationale est en train d'être tentée par les Seychelles, nation insulaire de l'océan Indien. Ce soi-disant paradis tropical, qui est dangereusement proche de la faillite de certains grands prêts bancaires internationaux, construit deux immenses parcs d'eau salée et en échange, ils négocient une bonne partie de leur dette nationale. Cet incroyable plan de financement environnemental est le premier du genre au monde. Une sorte de marge de manœuvre financière, le pays va échanger des reconnaissances de dette pour un sanctuaire stable et protégé pour les poissons tropicaux menacés et autres créatures marines - y compris, mais sans s'y limiter, tortues, thonidés, étoiles de mer, hippocampes, coraux, limaces et concombres . Un seul poisson sera définitivement exclu des deux parcs marins proposés - les requins. Les dirigeants économiques des Seychelles espèrent que l'afflux massif de touristes visitant le pays chaque année encouragera avec enthousiasme le projet et contribuera à restructurer la dette du pays en augmentant les droits d'entrée et les dons - ce qui, pour la plupart des citoyens des pays du être considéré comme une radiation d'impôt.

Les zones protégées autour de l'île d'Aldabra, déjà désignées par la Commission maritime des Nations Unies comme point de repère écologique, totaliseront plus de cent milles carrés et, une fois achevées, les parcs marins comprendront près de quinze pour cent de la superficie totale du pays.

L'idée originale de l'échange de dettes entre les parcs est venue de The Nature Conservancy, qui a déjà permis aux banques et à d'autres prêteurs de rogner cinq milliards de dollars de la dette nationale des Seychelles.

Ledes & Limericks. Thursday Februrary 22 2018

The capitalist system has created wealth

so abundant that billionaires have taken to

saving newspapers not with wealth-enhancing

turnaround visions in mind, but as a public service.

From Forbes.

When billionaires adopt the press

And so relieve their fiscal stress

Their motives are as pure as snow

(from Russian steppe or Wall Street floe.)

President Donald Trump on Thursday morning

called for arming select, highly trained, “weapons talented”

teachers to thwart mass school shootings,

arguing it would deter would-be “sicko” shooters.

 From the Wall Street Journal

Instructors who carry a gun

Will make sure that homework is done.

And students who plod

Are shown teacher’s rod,

So back to their books they will run!

The single most important thing you

can do for your family may be the

simplest of all: develop a strong family

narrative.  From the NYTimes

The stories that I tell my kids about their ancestry

Are breathtaking and apt to suffer from hyperbole.

And though my narratives would not hold up in court of law

They give my kids a sense of place and plenty of chutzpah!

Ledes & Limericks. Wednesday February 21 2018

Toy appraisers predict Beanie Babies will

never make a comeback, since the 1990s

children—millennials—aren’t collecting like

generations before them.  From the Wall Street Journal.

If you are a part of that sect

That Beanies did fully collect,

I’m sorry to say

You’ve wasted your pay --

Your pension is probably wrecked!

It’s content reporters must write,

Not truth or to fight the good fight.

Publishers harry

Their writers to marry

A pandering style nice and bright.

KOREAN FOOD AT THE OLYMPICS IS ‘NASTY’

 from the NYTimes

I do not eat octopus raw.

And eomuk sticks in my craw.

Olympics be hanged,

I won’t be harangued

Into black seaweed coleslaw!

beauty is weightless

beauty is weightless

the color of balanced snow

above steaming streets

cold and soft the night

shadows form in mist

light sighs away into blue

cold and soft the night

Ledes & Limericks. Tuesday February 20 2018

Police spokesman Emilian Kayima told journalists that Kamagu
was arrested for what he termed as "using his mouth
recklessly and defaming everyone".  From New Vision.

When using the mouth, have a care

It’s not for some fool reckless dare,

Like making a breach

With too much free speech --

Which makes people think and then share.

It is hardly premature to ask, in this light, how the Trump
administration might manage the fallout from the economic
downturn that everybody knows will happen. Unfortunately,
the United States could hardly be less prepared.  From the NYTimes.

When hard times return with a bang

And hoboes can prowl like a gang,

It’s thankful I’ll be

For austerity

To stop the unceasing harangue.

Japanese millionaire dubbed the

‘baby factory’ dad just won custody

of 13 surrogate children  from the Washington Post

A baby or two is okay,

But too many get in the way.

This millionaire chap

Who’s taking the rap

For dozens is strictly horseplay

une note de ma fille missionnaire

Bonjour à tous! Je n'ai plus le temps d'écrire cette semaine, mais je veux juste que tu saches que je t'aime et que des miracles se produisent tous les jours. J'ai appris cette semaine qu'attendre les bénédictions à venir est vraiment difficile, mais cela en vaut la peine. J'ai lu un discours de Henry B. Eyring qui était tellement génial, il s'appelle La loi des retours croissants et c'est une question d'attente et de temps. Il dit de chercher l'humour chaque jour, de chercher les bénédictions qui viennent maintenant, de garder un œil sur le but lointain et d'attendre la bénédiction tardive. Je pense que nous abandonnons beaucoup trop tôt beaucoup de fois, et nous devons juste nous rappeler d'être patients et d'attendre le Seigneur. Il nous laisse attendre pour construire notre foi, et alors Il peut nous donner la chose que nous attendions. Je sais que c'est vrai. Je vous aime tous, bonne semaine! Amour, Soeur Torkildson